PART II

The Great Island in Global Confict, 1914–1945

Most of Madagascar had been under French control for fewer than twenty years (some of this control was precarious if one considers the extent of Menalamba revolt of 1896–1898) when the Great War erupted in Europe. At that juncture, like the rest of the French, British and German overseas empires, Madagascar was expected to contribute to the cause, frst with natural resources, such as rubber, mica and graphite, then with manpower, in the form of both laborers and fghters. Thus Madagascar found itself profoundly immersed in both world wars. The process was admittedly gradual. Initially, in 1914, Joseph Gallieni and other Madagascar experts in the French high command were of the opinion that Malagasy soldiers should not be recruited to fght in Europe; at best they could be counted on to protect Madagascar itself. And yet, as the war dragged on, Paris began to reconsider this early position that had rested largely on racialized assumptions about loyalty and martial qualities. By 1916, recruitment was in full tilt in Madagascar. The fact that men were promised 200 francs upon enlistment certainly encouraged “volunteers.” In total, 41,355 Malagasy soldiers were enlisted over the course of World War I, 20,425 of whom were sent to the theater of war, and 2471 of whom perished. To be sure, this was fewer than the nearly 300,000 recruited in North Africa or the 165,229 in French West Africa. Still, Madagascar ranked as the fourth contributor of colonial troops to the French cause in World War I, just after Indochina, and well ahead of French Equatorial Africa, for instance. This total was especially 90 PART II THE GREAT ISLAND IN GLOBAL CONFLICT, 1914–1945 noteworthy if one considers that Madagascar only counted some three million inhabitants in 1913. Chronologically, recruitment reached a peak in Madagascar in 1917, a year after it had frst crested in West Africa, where revolts led authorities briefy to scale back their efforts in 1917 (recruiters returned there with a vengeance in 1918). Once they disembarked on both the Western and Eastern fronts, Malagasy troops found themselves once again the victims of negative stereo- types. The high command initially preferred using them in reserve or logis- tical capacities. Nevertheless, by 1917–1918, Malagasy troops participated in numerous battles on the Western front, and several Malagasy battalions were also dispatched to the Balkan theater of operations. A considerable proportion of Malagasy recruits served in artillery units. Additionally, 5534 Malagasy workers left for France between 1914 and 1918.1 Madagascar’s involvement in the Second World War can be divided into several phases. The frst one involved preparations for the war. In January 1939, the governor of Madagascar drew up a list of 272,509 potential workers; he recommended that 50,000 of them be dispatched to toil in French factories. Thousands did indeed end up in France, although certainly not the totals being considered in January 1939.2 The battle of France in May–June 1940 marked a second phase. Some 14,000 Malagasy troops were implicated in this short-lived campaign, including elements of the forty-second semi-brigade of the mitrail- leurs d’infanterie coloniale. The latter suffered heavy losses as they attempted to block the lightning advance of German panzers through the Ardennes.3 France’s defeat in June 1940 marked the start of a third phase. It saw the authorities in Antananarivo proclaim their loyalty to the new regime emerging at Vichy over the summer of 1940. From the outset, this new government, led by Marshal Philippe Pétain, was steeped in anti-demo- cratic, hierarchical, ultra-nationalistic, xenophobic and racist tendencies.

1 Chantal Valensky, “Madagascar” in Mémoires d’outre-mer: Les colonies et la premi- ère guerre mondiale (Peronne: Historial de la Grande guerre, 1996), pp. 68–73 and 107. Jacques Frémeaux, Les Colonies dans la Grande Guerre (Paris: 14–18 éditions, 2006), pp. 63–73. Richard Fogarty, Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), p. 89. 2 David Smith, “French Like the Others: Colonial Migrants in Wartime France” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2013, p. 54. 3 Eric Deroo and Antoine Champeaux, “Panorama des troupes coloniales françaises dans les deux guerres mondiales,” Revue historique des armées 271 (2013): 72–88. PART II THE GREAT ISLAND IN GLOBAL CONFLICT, 1914–1945 91

The decision of Madagascar’s authorities to remain in line with Vichy would have profound ramifcations: it meant that Madagascar was sub- jected to a partial British naval blockade, that relations with mainland France were vastly reduced, and that Vichy’s ideologies and imperatives were exported wholesale to faraway Madagascar. Pétain’s desire to clean shop, to hunt scapegoats allegedly responsible for the defeat of 1940, and to return to a distant, idealized past, would all leave their mark on Madagascar. Meanwhile, in mainland France, thousands of now demobilized Malagasy soldiers were taken prisoner by the Germans, and languished in Frontstalags.4 By the end of 1941, 3888 Malagasy soldiers were still held in these camps. They were guarded frst by Germans, then subsequently, by Vichy French forces. Other Malagasy men and women remained employed in the Southern or free zone of France, including demobilized soldiers. An offcial report from November 1941 remarked that these demobilized Malagasy troops suffered from especially low morale. The document was based on the reading of intercepted letters. It specifed with alarm that many of the Malagasy men wrote home of having French female companions—some included photos—a state of affairs that clearly threatened to subvert colonial hierarchies.5 This was a carryover of colo- nial anxieties concerning colonial troops in the previous world war. On the great island, Vichy rule was cut short by multiple British mili- tary campaigns, some of which some have been considered dress rehears- als for the amphibious landings in Normandy. The frst occurred on May 5, 1942. It targeted the strategic port of Diego-Suarez. Vichy put up far more of a fght than its rulers would later let on, when they claimed to have wished only to show Germany that they were sincere about main- taining the empire’s “neutrality.” In reality, 171 Vichy troops perished, as did 121 British and Commonwealth troops, over the two days of fghting near Diego-Suarez between May 5 and 7, 1942. In September of that same year, British forces landed frst at Majunga, then at Tamatave, and proceeded toward the capital Antananarivo. Vichy forces resisted once more, this time for ffty-six days, blowing up ffty-eight bridges as they retreated southwards. There followed a brief British inter- regnum. Finally, in 1943, General Charles de Gaulle’s Fighting French,

4 Maurice Rives, Robert Dietrich, Héros méconnus: mémorial des combattants d’Afrique noire et de Madagascar (Paris: Frères d’armes, 1990), p. 284. 5 ANF F 60 416, service du contrôle technique, Vichy, November 6, 1941. 92 PART II THE GREAT ISLAND IN GLOBAL CONFLICT, 1914–1945 who had been kept out of the Madagascar operations by the British, fnally took control of Madagascar.6 By the close of the Second World War, Madagascar had experienced seismic upheavals, and countless aftershocks. Its soldiers and laborers had fought to defend France in 1940. Thereafter the island became a card that Vichy played in its collaboration with Germany; some of its graphite and mica even fell into German hands. Then, in a yet another about- face, beginning in 1943, Madagascar’s combatants, its rubber and other resources, all served the allied cause during the war’s fnal stages. Given these wildly divergent trajectories, it may be little wonder that colonial monuments to the Second World War in Madagascar, like the blue, white and red one in Ranohira appearing in Fig. 1, tend to simply refer to “war victims of 1939–1945”. The category is broad enough to encompass both Vichy stalwarts who fought tooth and nail to keep British forces at bay, as well as volunteers who left Madagascar in 1943 to help defeat Nazi Germany. Some of the major questions surrounding the two world wars in Madagascar have drawn historical attention over the last decades. Chantal Valensky and Richard Fogarty have probed the conditions of frontline Malagasy soldiers on the Western front between 1914 and 1918, their recruitment and the forms of discrimination they faced. Lucile Rabearimanana has explored economic disruptions caused by the advent of Vichy in 1940. Claude Bavoux has examined how Madagascar’s French nationals embraced Vichy ideology. Martin Thomas has studied British motivations for intervening in Madagascar in 1942.7

6 Eric Jennings, “Vichy à Madagascar: conjoncture, mutations, et Révolution nationale dans la Grande Île” in Edmond Maestri and Evelyne Combeau-Mari eds., Le Régime de Vichy dans l’Océan Indien: Madagascar et la Réunion, 1940–1942, (Paris: SEDES, 2002), pp. 21–43. 7 Chantal Valensky, Le Soldat occulté: Les Malgaches dans l’armée française. 1884–1920 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995); Fogarty, Race and War in France; Lucile Rabearimanana, “Le district de Manjakandriana (Province d’Antananarivo) pendant la deuxième guerre mondi- ale: désorganisation économique et restructuration sociale,” Omaly Sy Anio, (1989) 29–32: 433–456; Claude Bavoux, “Les Zanatany de Madagascar entre la Seconde guerre mondiale et l'insurrection de 1947: une communauté en état d’hypomnésie,” Travaux et Documents, Revue de l'Université de la Réunion, (2001) 16: 49–75; Martin Thomas, “Imperial Backwater or Strategic Outpost? The British Takeover of Vichy Madagascar, 1942,” The Historical Journal, (1996) 39 (4): 1049–1074. PART II THE GREAT ISLAND IN GLOBAL CONFLICT, 1914–1945 93

Fig. 1 War monument at Ranohira, painted in the colors of the French fag, with the mention “Monument to the victims of the 1939–1945 war.” Author’s photo

And yet, many parts of this especially rich and dense nebula remain uncharted. The following chapters explore two of them. One centers on discourses of sacrifce, the other on questions of colonial author- ity unbound. More specifcally, Chap. 4 probes the memorial dynam- ics at work in Madagascar in the wake of the First World War. How was the island’s so-called “blood tax” framed? Whose sacrifce was being remembered and to what ends? How was Malagasy uniqueness inscribed in stone? Chap. 5 considers the impact of regime change in 1940 in the Malagasy central highlands. Zooming in on the community of Soavinandriana, it highlights the repressive arsenal of a colonial ruler whom the war further empowered, transforming him into a veritable despot.